Opinion: Phenomenal Learning Gains In Elementary Schools, But Gender Gaps Still Stark Reality

Learning levels of elementary schoolchildren in rural India, which were adversely affected during the Covid-19 pandemic, have shown a remarkable increase in 2024 by recovering to pre-pandemic levels, and even surpassing it in some states. Government schools have shown the most remarkable change across the country in reading and arithmetic problem-solving abilities of students of elementary grades. Grade V students have registered the highest ever growth in the last decade.

However, the gender gaps in the school education journey from pre-primary, elementary and above still remain wide and evident.

Ranging from enrollment, learning levels, school retention, digital access, and digital safety awareness, girls have seen less improvement as compared to boys, and in some respects the gap is significantly wide.

The phenomenal story of growth on various aspects of education during a short span of time between 2022 and 2024 has been detailed in the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER, 2024), which covered 6,49,491 children in 17,997 villages and 605 districts across India.

The biggest highlight of the report released on Tuesday, January 28, is that the learning percentage of students in grade III in government schools with required reading ability is presently at the highest ever recorded in the country ever since ASER started in year 2005 (2018- 20.9%; 2022-3%; 2024-23.4%).

What The ASER 2024 Says 

The urgent need during the pandemic for digital learning interventions led to an increase in access to mobile phones among the 15-16-year-old girls and boys. Here too, the gender gaps in digital access and awareness on digital safety among boys and girls remain of concern and raise risks for girls of either being left behind in learning or being more exposed to tech-facilitated gender-based violence, as compared to boys. Several studies have shown that girls are often less likely than boys to share or report violence out of the fear of losing access to public space that also includes education and technological access.

The ASER shows that over 79 percent girls and 86 percent boys knew how to use a smartphone, but a little more than half of the girls and 65 percent boys were aware about digital safety. The concern becomes even grave when the data findings show the use of mobile phones by children more for social media activity (76%) and less (57%) for educational purpose. The risk of online gender-based violence remains high for boys with stigmas in reporting experience of violence due to deep-rooted harmful masculine norms that also inhibit them from reporting any form of violence online. Nonetheless, the girls face a higher burden of loss of opportunities owing to it. 

This yet again brings our focus to the need for integrating gender equitable approach in education planning, with more gender disaggregated data and accountability of implementation to address the inequitable gender norms at the community, school and institutional levels.

The risks of loss of existing public or digital spaces that the girls have negotiated so far due to lack of digital safety awareness are not unfounded, and its reflection can be seen on ground in terms of school girls in 2024, which still remains over 10 percent higher than boys. The phenomena is worrying in the states of Madhya Pradesh (16.1%), Uttar Pradesh (15%), Mizoram (12.3%), Rajasthan (12.7%), Gujarat (10.5%) and Chhattisgarh (10%). A detailed analysis of the drivers, enablers and challenges of girls' high dropout rate needs to be further undertaken as the state-specific ASERs are released in the coming months. 

Need To Critically Think About Framework-Level Changes

From what we know so far, the pandemic multiplied the gender adversities for both boys and girls in schools, as we saw reports of lesser number of girls and boys returning to school, having to drop out due to early marriages of girls, and boys being forced to take up the role of provider for the families and often landing them in precarious jobs in unorganised sector. While studies have shown that such decisions were taken by families and communities after assessing a high opportunity cost of keeping children in school and such decisions were further triggered by supply side factors of poor quality of education, vacancy of teachers and bleak future of jobs after education. This perhaps has pushed many children, families and communities back into a cycle of economic, education and health poverty.

While we need to cheer the story of this educational growth, we also need to pause and critically think about the building blocks, such as framework-level changes including the National Education Policy, structural changes at primary education level and collective responsibility of school, parents and local governance systems and most importantly gender transformative education planning and implementation. 

The writer is a technical expert on Gender and Adolescent Programming and Research in School Education System.

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